Citrus Greening Research

Similarity between citrus greening pathogen and other pathogens of plants

Ca. Liberibacter asiaticus’(CaLas), thecausal agent of Huanglongbing (citrus greening),can’t be grown in a Petri dish in the laboratory, and only exists inside infected plants and insects, which makes the study of its biology difficult.CaLas, however, shares genes with other bacteria which can be studied more easily These includeA. tumefaciens, a plant pathogen, B. henselae a blood pathogen, and B. japonicum and S. meliloti two bacteria that infect plants but instead of causing disease, provide nitrogen fertilizer to the plants.You can see that all five bacteria share 514 genes involved with essential metabolism, but each has a large number of genes that are not shared with the other bacteria. Other genes are shared by only two three or four of the bacteria. This sort of analysis provides clues to researchers trying to figure out what makes Liberibacter tick.